The Confusing History of The Star Trek License

In a previous video I posted from the YouTube channel Midnight’s Edge we heard about decisions made by CBS considering Star Trek that are making a negative impact on Paramount’s own Star Trek movies. This might be confusing since I’m sure most of you thought Paramount owned Star Trek. It was right there in the credits. Paramount and Paramount Home Video distributed the various Star Trek movies. Why wouldn’t they be the rights owners? Basically it comes from a rather bad decision, the same kind of anti-sci-fi bias that killed Doctor Who despite both being successful worldwide, and corporate shenanigans.

In THIS video from Midnight’s Edge, the team looks at those licensing issues and how Lucille Ball, Viacom, a well-meaning split of companies that didn’t take into account who had which license, and genre hatred has led to the strange licensing issues Star Trek has and why CBS owns Star Trek but Paramount still has their own Star Trek. It should be less confusing if you pay attention.

I really don’t have anything to add here. I do plan to have the follow-up video mentioned as Midnight’s Edge continues to unravel this rights mess. If you want to get there before I do, follow their YouTube channel to keep up to date.